Ix REPORT—1858. 
and neuricity*, to interchangeable modes of action of one and the same 
all-pervading life-essence. 
Galvani arranged the parts of a recently-mutilated frog so as to bring a 
nerve in contact with the external surface of a muscle, when a contraction 
of the muscle ensued. In this suggestive experiment the Italian philosopher, 
who thereby initiated the inductive inquiry into the relation of nerve force 
to electric force, concluded that the contraction was a necessary conse- 
quence of the passage of electricity from one surface to the other by means 
of the nerve. He supposed that the electricity was secreted by the brain, 
and transmitted by the nerves to different parts of the body, the muscles 
serving as reservoirs of the electricity. Volta made a further step, by show- 
ing that, under the conditions or arrangements of Galvani’s experiments, the 
muscle would contract, whether the electric current had its origin in the 
animal body, or from a source external to that body. Galvani erred in 
too exclusive a reference of the electric force producing the contraction 
to the brain of the animal: Volta in excluding the origin of the electric foree 
from the animal body altogether. The determination of ‘ the true’ and ‘the 
constant’ in these recondite phznomena has been mainly helped on by the 
persevering and ingenious experimental researches of Matteucci and Du 
Bois Reymond. The latter has shown that any point of the surface of a 
muscle is positive in relation to any point of the divided or transverse section 
of the same muscle; and that any point of the surface of a nerve is positive 
in relation to any point of the divided or transverse section of the same nerve. 
Mr. Baxter, in still more recent researches, has deduced important conclu- 
sions on the origin of the muscular and nerve currents, as being due to the 
polarized condition of the nerve or muscular fibre, and the relation of that 
condition to changes which occur during nutrition. From the present state 
of neuro-electricity it may be concluded that nerve force is not identical with 
electric force, but that it may be another mode of motion of the same com- 
mon force: it is certainly a polar force, and perhaps the highest form of 
polar force :— 
“ A motion which may change, but cannot die ; 
An image of some bright eternity.” 
The present tendency of the higher generalizations of chemistry seems to 
be toward a reduction of the number of those bodies which are called 
‘elementary ;’ it begins to be suspected that certain groups of so-called 
chemical elements are but modified forms of one another. 
An important step in the elimination of the chlorine and bromine group 
from the category of simple bodies or elements has very recently been made 
by Prof. Schénbein. He, at least, adduces strong reasons, from analogy, 
for regarding those substances as ‘oxy-compounds,’ or what the Professor 
terms ‘ Ozonides;’ chlorine being, according to this view, the peroxide of 
murium=MuO+0. The researches on which this conclusion is founded 
have recalled to my mind the cautious terms in which my venerable Teacher 
* Force ascribed to a nervous fluid. 
